VS 2012 Report Designer Creating Shared Data Source

Question

I am an intern, our companies report guru was my mentor, but he left 8 months ago and I have inherited his report responsibility.

We are deploying some new servers. I have set up new reports and connections for the INT and STG versions. I have full access to these two servers.

I do not have any permissions for PROD. Our DBA has created the Shared Data Source on the target server. (He created all of the Shared Data Sources on the servers first)

I have attempted to create and connect the Shared Data Source in Report Designer to the Shared Data Source on the PROD server. I have failed.

I have managed reports on our system that point to servers I have no access to. Their shared data sources where set up before my time with the company.

1st Question. Can you successfully set up a Shared Data Source in Report Designer if you have no permissions on the target server?

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms155845.aspx

I have perused this page, and will quote what I feel is most pertinent.

"To create a shared data source or modify its properties, you must have Manage data sources permissions on the report server. If the report server runs in native mode, you can use Report Manager to create and configure the shared data source. If the report server runs in SharePoint integrated mode, you can use the application pages on a SharePoint site. For any report server regardless of its mode, you can create a shared data source in Report Designer and then publish it to a target server. "

2nd Question. Does order of operations matter in this case? The last sentence says I can create the data source and then publish it to the server. Would that provide different results then creating it on the server first, and then creating it in Report Designer?(In INT and STG our reports deployed properly with this second method)

Thank you for taking the time to answer these two questions. I hope my background information was clear enough.

Answer 1

Question 1. Yes, you can.

Question 2. Unsure.

My personal problem ended up being a firewall issue. Once the firewall issue was taken care of I was able to successfully set up the connection and deploy the working report on the server.

There have been some minor issues with the set up of the connection. This leads me to believe that the ideal order to set up the connections would be to create the shared data source in Report Designer and publish it to the target server.

I have not been able to replicate the precise problem, so the issue might just be between the keyboard and the chair and there is actually no issue changing the order of operations.